The man clucked his tongue. ‘There’s not much work for you people in this district. The elections, you know.’
‘Thank you for your time.’
He closed his ledger with a dusty thud and reopened it at the first page. ‘Three months. There’s work – farm work – in Danapur in three months. Shall I put your name down?’
‘Do you think they might give me an advance on my wages, sahib?’
‘Definitely not.’
‘Then you should not put my name down. I need money now.’
‘Get an auto. Lots of business. Especially with the rains coming.’
‘I can’t afford one.’
‘Since when has that stopped anyone?’ And with that he stretched behind for a file, then sat up straight again, the front chair legs banging the stone floor. Clearly, Tochi was to leave now: he’d taken up enough of his time. He wound back through the bazaar and to the main road. Soon he could see buses up ahead, their fuzzy red lights pitching through the slow dark. He walked three or four miles, maybe, past a newly built hotel and several others not yet finished. Then he was weaving through the city herds of cars and lorries, crossing the chowk to get to the mandi. He stopped outside the market. All the shutters were pulled greyly down: he’d find no auto drivers here. He made for Patna Junction, hands pushed deep inside his pockets and arms rod-straight, shoulders hitched up to his neck. There were no lights here, just the muted silver of the moon trailing the alleys.
He kept his head low, not looking at the men stalking the night for drink and women. Rounding a corner too quickly, he felt his stomach dip and his left side sink warmly down. A drain. He could feel his sandal dredging off. He fetched his toes together and yanked his leg out of the sewage. It emerged in foul sludge and without its sandal. He rolled his sleeves to his shoulders and moved onto his knees, feeling his hand carve its way through the black waste. He closed his eyes and constricted his nostrils, lowering his shoulder to deepen his reach. He couldn’t find it. His arm was dripping great cones of black filth like some diseased and shedding creature. He wiped off as much of it as he could and carried on up the lane, limping with his heavy leg and one sandal. He knew he stank – even the women on the balconies made chi-chi noises.
In time he took off his other sandal and left it at the side of the road. The ground was warm underfoot. Not far from the train station he stopped outside a theka, a liquor store. The owner had a yellow towel slung around his neck, each end held in his fist as if he was a boxer’s mate. He stood there staring out at the night and at Tochi as if all his life he’d been waiting for Tochi to pass. Tochi asked if he might clean himself up. He was searching for a job, he said, and didn’t think he stood much chance looking like this. The man jerked his head to the side and said there was a tap round the back. Soap too.
‘Thank you,’ and Tochi followed the wall down, twisting side on to slip between two giant pipes that climbed into the darkness. He had to grope to find the tap and after maybe a minute or two water started coughing out. He washed his arm as best he could and removed his trousers and scrubbed them roughly. When he put them back on, the stiff blackness remained, and his arm still gave off a thin smell of rotting sewage. He closed the tap and went round to thank the owner.
‘Where are you going?’ the man asked.
‘I’m looking for work.’
‘What kind of work?’
‘Rickshaw work.’
The man looked doubtful. ‘You can afford one?’
Tochi thanked him again and turned to go.
‘If you want to make money quick, lots of boys are taking an operation. We could do a deal.’
The man seemed to smile with only one half of his face, which frightened Tochi a little, and he apologized and said he really had to go.
He heard a coal train shrieking to its stop on the other side of a building up ahead. He rounded the building – a cinema – then crossed the rail lines and climbed. The auto drivers were all outside the station, most of them asleep in their taxis while they waited on the morning crowd. One driver stood with his back to Tochi, singing.
‘Bhaiya, can I ask for your help?’
The man turned round, in no hurry. He was shorter than Tochi, and his small moon of a face and thin legs seemed a wrong fit for the rest of his body, as if all the fat in him had deposited itself in a wide belt around his waist. His hair was slicked back. ‘Kya?’
‘I’d like to speak to someone who will sell me an auto.’
The man looked Tochi up and down, at his ruined clothes. ‘Autos don’t come cheap. Who did you rob?’
‘Who do I speak to?’
The man made a dismissive gesture with his hand. ‘No more licences in the city. Find some other work.’
‘Just tell me who I need to speak to.’
‘You need to speak to me, and I’ve told you already.’
Tochi remained where he was, looking at the man. ‘Maybe I should ask someone else.’
The man chuckled and turned his head to the side. ‘All this government support must be going to their heads. Now they want to work with us, too.’
From the autos came a couple of sleepy, smoky laughs.
He spat at the ground, right between Tochi’s feet, and stood there smirking, arms crossed over his chest as if waiting for Tochi’s next move. Relenting, Tochi returned to the station platform and was about to cross the tracks when a voice called him back. A body pieced itself together through the dark, chest uncovered, an orange lunghi twisted expertly around waist and thighs. The man asked if Tochi was the one looking for an auto, because he had one for sale, or at least his brother did.
‘Where is it?’ Tochi asked.
‘You know the clock tower? By the maidaan? Meet me there in the morning,’ and before Tochi could ask anything else the man turned and hastened up the platform.
Away from the station, he breathed in a clear, great draught of air, looked up and asked God to please let this chance be real.
He checked under each stairwell he passed for a place to lie down, but they were all full, and soon he realized he was near the river. He crossed the flyover, spookily quiet at this hour, and scrambled on down. The water looked seductive, its dips aglow with moonlight. Off to his left was the simple outline of the long red bridge. At the river’s edge, he took off his trousers and shirt and washed them in the water, then returned to the wall in his wet clothes. There were already people bedded down for the night, bodies lying low against the bricks, sheltered from the wind above. He found a space further along and lay on his side, facing the river. It didn’t take long for his eyes to feel heavy, and the last thing he registered was the fat honk of a tugboat gliding darkly by.
He was at the maidaan not long after sunrise and already the place was filling: shoeshine boys setting up for the day, office men strolling to work, nuns on their morning constitutional. He couldn’t see the man anywhere. His eyes moved to a tidy saffron crowd gathered in the shade of an apple tree. They were sitting around a man who kept pointing to a piece of paper in his hand. Some sort of protest, maybe. Tochi looked up at the clock tower. He wished they’d agreed on a specific time.
He was woken by someone shaking his shoulder, and rushed to his feet.
‘Where’s the auto?’
‘Come with me.’
As they walked, they could hear the man under the tree: ‘We need a strategy to install Hindutva! They can’t keep holding us down!’ A bright white banner twisted itself across the brambles: Bharat is for the pure of blood and blood we will shed to keep it pure.
The auto man fluttered his hand by his side, indicating that Tochi keep his distance from the crowd. ‘These Maheshwar Sena people,’ he said.
Tochi waited, hoping for something further, but the man left it at that and they carried on over the maidaan and through the iron gates.
The auto was a broken, paint-peeled thing, the yellow roof bevelled with dents. Tochi pointed to the ruptured front tyre. ‘Is there a spare?’
‘Under the seat.’
Walking round the vehicle, he noticed Om stickers plastered to the rear grille-window and pictures of Sai Baba. ‘How much?’
The man turned his head, calling, ‘Bhaiya?’
Tochi hadn’t spotted the man sitting inside the auto, hidden by the deep grime of the window. His brother, Tochi remembered, as the man shuffled to the side and with some effort levered himself out. For balance, he kept one hand on the doorframe. He looked ill, and his voice, when it came, was the voice of a man decades older.
‘Whatever you can afford, bhaiya.’
‘I can’t afford anything. I’ll pay you from what I earn each day.’
The first man shook his head. ‘Do you think we’re stupid?’
‘Now, now, nikku,’ the brother said.
‘You’ll never see him again, I promise you that.’
The ill man looked at Tochi. Tochi said nothing. He just stood there in his stiff river-washed trousers and mouldy white shirt.
‘We’ll see,’ the man said.
‘You’re crazy!’
The ill man smiled. ‘Please excuse my brother-in-law. But the auto’s yours if you would like it.’
They agreed on the time and place Tochi would come each evening to make good on his payment, and then the man held out the keys and licence, and a list of regular pick-ups.
‘I hope it brings you better luck than it did me,’ he said.
Tochi lay in the auto, at the end of the slim gully that led to his house. He kept the keys in his fist and his fist hidden inside his armpit. He’d felt almost criminal driving home, as if he’d expected someone to halt him and point out how ridiculous it was for his family to own such a thing. Children throwing marbles into the fountain had stopped and stared. Even Kishen had looked up from his tailoring, tape measure clamped between his teeth, and asked if Tochi had taken to robbing banks.
Lovingly, Tochi ran his hand over the handlebars, the leather old and bristly against his palm. He heard something, and saw that it was Dalbir stepping out of the dark lane. He was carrying a steel bowl with a spoonful of dhal, and a single roti. He handed this to Tochi.
‘I’ll bring your tea later,’ Dalbir said, climbing in beside him. His wide eyes made a slow tour of the vehicle, neck arching as though he was inside some huge temple.
‘I can’t remember the last time Ma was so happy.’
‘Who’s asking you to?’
‘I’m asking myself.’
‘Don’t.’ Tochi passed him half of his roti.
‘I’ve eaten.’
‘Eat some more.’
At dawn, he filled a bucket with water from the pump and bought on credit a bar of crumbling strawberry soap from Bicky’s Friendship Store. He started at the back, scrubbing off the stickers, slowly working his way round. At some point, Dalbir came and asked for the spare rag.
It was far into the morning when the last of the polish had been applied. Tochi went back to the house and wrapped a shawl around his father’s torso. Then he helped him outside and sat him on a chair in front of the auto. Tochi’s mother and sister followed, heads covered and holding a bowl of yoghurt and a saucer of holy water Palvinder had fetched that morning from the gurdwara. She dipped her fingertips in the water and went round the auto splashing drops. Then his mother fed Tochi a spoonful of the buttery yoghurt. Tochi touched her feet and she asked God to bless her son with success.
He drove into Pankaj Flats Colony, joining the squiggle of autos already parked by the gated compound, and climbed out into the hot afternoon. He’d never been to this quiet corner of the city before. A chowkidar sat dozing in his chair, thumbs hooked into his belt-loops, and on the other side of the gate, where the sun burst across the apartment blocks, Tochi could hear children playing. The other drivers were hunkered down in the shade of the wall, reading a paper or listening to the cricket. Tochi crouched down too, on the flats of his feet, rounding his back closely over his knees and threading fingers together tight across his shins, curling himself up into as small a target as possible for the sun. He wasn’t sure when the woman was going to come out. Any time between two and three, the list had said. Someone offered him a beedi, which he declined.
‘So you’ve taken Ashok Bhai’s auto?’
‘Bought.’
The man smiled. ‘That’s what I meant.’
His name was Susheel, he said. From Jannat. That was his auto over there, the one with the lucky red ribbons tied to the grille. He seemed younger than Tochi – the softness of his beard, a certain confidence.
‘If you need anything, just ask for me. Everyone knows who I am.’
Tochi nodded, thanked him, but perhaps he hadn’t seemed sufficiently impressed.
‘Ask anyone. Susheel. That’s me.’
There was a loud banging on the metal gate and a call for it to be opened. The chowkidar rolled up onto his feet, leisurely, stretching. He said he was coming, madam, coming. The drivers all stood up too, but when the gate flushed open to reveal the woman, most of them sat back down. She stepped forward, her hand a shield against the sun. Tochi didn’t know if this was her, and he didn’t want to approach and ask – it might look like he was in the business of stealing someone else’s pick-up. But then Susheel confirmed that this was his ride, or one of Ashok Bhai’s old ones, at least. Tochi walked to the woman, salaamed, and explained that he’d bought Ashok Bhai’s auto and if she would permit him to lead her to his vehicle he’d take her wherever she needed to go. There was a sudden silence, and Tochi could feel the drivers staring at him. The woman nodded and said, ‘Of course. Please, after you.’
He waited for her to be seated before rousing the engine and reversing out of the compound. ‘You should have brought the auto to me,’ the woman said.
Tochi nodded. He’d worked out as much already. ‘Sorry, madam.’
She laughed. ‘No matter.’
Twenty minutes later he parked outside a modern-looking building with ‘Sheetal’s’ embossed across the window in a spiky green diagonal.
‘Wow, that was fast,’ the woman said, throwing aside her magazine.
She gathered up the pleats of her crimson sari and stepped gracefully onto the lumpy tarmac. A sliver of her nut-brown midriff was briefly exposed.
‘Two hours, acha?’
Tochi nodded, and watched as the peon beamed and opened the door, and she swished up the marble steps and hurried inside, away from the heat.
Tochi drove to Kumhrar Road, where he caught a couple of fares: two white-saried widows carrying trays of unlit dia lamps to the Radha Krishna Mandir, and then a father and son who wanted to fly their kites on the ghats. When he got back to Sheetal’s, he still had to wait a full fat hour before the peon opened the door and the woman came down the steps, talking over her shoulder to a friend who followed. They stopped beside the auto, still talking. Something about someone’s kitty party. Tochi couldn’t be sure: their tongue was half English. He wanted to try for a few more fares before the evening grew too thick and he had to go home. He looked at the glassy timer in the centre of his handlebars, and maybe the woman’s friend saw him looking and made some sort of gesture with her eyes, for he heard Madam say, ‘Oh, he’s just a scheduled.’
There was an excruciating silence, and the woman’s friend smiled in a squeamish way and said she’d see Radhika next time, later in the week maybe. Madam waved and reluctantly turned round. She was biting the corner of her lip, like a schoolgirl. She got into the back without once looking at Tochi and asked quietly if he wouldn’t mind going next to St Joseph’s Sacred Heart School. They needed to pick up her son.
The next day, Tochi drove right up to the gate where Madam was waiting for him. Her chin was up, eyes peering down her nose, and she climbed into the back of the auto in a single swift movement. Determined not to speak, it seemed, as if to illustrate the proper relationship between driver and Madam. It didn’t last long. Tochi had only turned onto Ganapathy Drive when she flopped forward, elbows on knees.
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‘Acha, I’m sorry. But it’s so hard to know what to say these days. I mean, are you even still called chamaars? Legally? Am I allowed to say that?’
‘You can call me what you like. I only want to drive you and get paid for it.’
‘So what should I call you?’
Tochi said nothing.
She fell back, sighing. ‘I’m not a horrible person, you know. I do feel sorry for you people.’
Through the rear-view mirror he could see her looking out the side, agitated, frowning, as if again her words had come out wrong.
When he returned to pick her up, she appeared at the window, waving far too excitedly, and suddenly the door was thrown open and she was coming down the steps, sari hitched up and six, seven, eight women pushing up behind. They arranged themselves around the auto, beaming at Tochi. Collectively, they gave off a pinkish, fruity scent.
Madam spoke calmly, though there was something strained about her face, as if she were trying to check her delight: ‘Can you fit us all in?’
Tochi asked where they were going.
‘Bakerganj,’ said one.
‘The maidaan,’ said another.
An obese and middle-aged third shunted her friends aside. ‘The Women’s Shelter. I’m patron of their birth-control programme. Actually, I should tell you that we have a real problem with birth control in your caste group. Are you married?’
Tochi twisted the key and the engine puttered up. ‘I’m only allowed to take four.’
All nine forced themselves into the auto, sitting on each other’s laps, standing, singing, as if this was a great adventure.
He skirted potholes and speed humps, avoiding police checkpoints, and as each passenger alighted they gave their address and a time to collect them the following day.
‘Most of us have sold our private cars,’ Madam said. ‘We want to help the poor in society instead.’
It was just her and her son left. The boy bounced about in his white shirt and fire-engine-red tie. Twice his mother pressed upon him his sunglasses, and twice he threw them off. At the compound gate, he jumped out and ran towards a waiting kulfi cart. His mother gathered his satchel into her lap.
The Year of the Runaways Page 5
